U.S. Trade Representative Hills Angers Koreans : Open markets: Her blunt talk on prohibitions on rice imports and criticism of a ‘frugality’ drive sent sparks flying.

Korean cartoonists label her “Calnal”--a play on her first name and a word meaning “sharp blade.” It is not a term of endearment. Carla Anderson Hills, the U.S. special trade representative, is much disliked in South Korea, and by the time she left here last week after a four-day visit, she was the target of even more sharp language.

Hills told the Koreans quite a few things they didn’t want to hear. She made clear that the United States believes that the time is drawing close for Seoul to drop its longstanding prohibition on rice imports, a ban the Koreans insist is vital for their farmers’ survival.

She also hit another sensitive issue, warning that Washington is growing worried that a recently launched “frugality campaign” may be a cover to limit imports in general.

The pressure did not go down well here. One newspaper cartoonist depicted Hills riding a missile aimed at a group of helpless Korean rice farmers. “Carla Hills Go Home” was the message on placards at student demonstrations. Hills’ aides acknowledge, with a certain perverse pride, that she has assumed what one called a “Darth Vader” image among ordinary Koreans.

While Americans often focus on trade problems with Japan or China, South Korea also looms large in the U.S.-Asian trade picture. Two-way trade with South Korea totaled $29 billion for the first nine months of this year, with the U.S. running a deficit of slightly more than $1 billion. More important, however, South Korea is an emerging Asian economic power, and American trade officials want to ensure that it remains an open market.

The sparks flying this week underscore the vast gap that often separates South Korea from the United States on trade issues, a gulf that is based not only on specific problems but on the two countries’ basic thinking about trade.

While Hills talks of the open exchange of goods based on fair competition, Koreans tend to approach trade as a life-and-death struggle that their vulnerable country must “win” at all costs. Where in most countries the academic and journalistic elite tends to urge free trade as beneficial to all countries involved, few economic experts in insular Korea hold such views, in part because, as one U.S. official here noted, “they risk being attacked by radical students” who view imports as an assault on the Korean way of life.

Hills’ trip, the main purpose of which was to attend a Pacific regional conference on economic cooperation, came at a time when South Korean public opinion is growing increasingly agitated over trade issues. For several years, South Korea’s vaunted export machine produced huge trade surpluses that were a source of immense national pride. This year, South Korea is expected to chalk up a deficit of about $8 billion, adding to the sense of vulnerability.

But rice is an even more important source of anxiety as Seoul has begun to face the prospect that its opposition to rice imports soon will become untenable in the face of overwhelming international pressure.

In South Korea, although rice costs roughly five times the world price, there is fervent public resistance to the idea of opening the rice market--even more so than in Japan--in part because of the sympathy for farmers in a country that until a couple of decades ago was predominantly rural.

Every major South Korean newspaper this week urged the government to stand fast against foreign rice; by contrast, in Japan, virtually every major newspaper has editorialized that Tokyo must show its international responsibility by opening the market.

That didn’t sway Hills. At a breakfast session with the American Chamber of Commerce in Korea, Hills, referring to the current international free-trade talks, said that “there is no country that can be engaged in our negotiations over trade and take a product off the table, because if one country takes one product off, another country will take another, and we have 108 at the table.”

Rice was not the only point of friction during Hills’ visit.

Last year around this time, the relationship between the United States and South Korea had soured significantly because American business executives here were complaining that they were being victimized by an anti-import drive.

The furor died down earlier this year, with a top U.S. Embassy official here saying that while foreign companies still encounter too many problems penetrating the market, “there are a lot more wheels that aren’t squeaking than ones that are”--meaning that plenty of U.S. business executives are happy with their success here.

But Hills said in her American Chamber of Commerce speech: “We worry that Korea’s current ‘frugality campaign’ could be simply a euphemism for protectionism.”

Hills’ remarks at the Chamber of Commerce breakfast prompted a Korean Presbyterian minister in the audience to take to the microphone and deliver an admonition.

“There are very serious people who think seriously about the continued need for maybe a few decades more of hard work and providence for children and tomorrow, and frugality,” the minister said. “So I hope you don’t get too much disturbed in America about some of these frugality movements.”